Living With Ghosts
by Guardian-381
Summary: Post canon. Yugi and company try to find the courage to move on.
1. Yugi

Disclaimer- I own no part of Yu-Gi-Oh. "Living With Ghosts" is the title of an album by Patty Griffin.

Spoilers- Reference to the events of the final episodes of the original series.

Living With Ghosts

Before that duel, the proverbial battle against myself, I thought that I knew what pain was. Certainly, I had been acquainted with some varieties of it: the shock of an assailant's fists, the torment of fear, the anguish of being a piece in a Shadow game. None of these, however, which overwhelmed me so utterly in their respective moments, can even compare to what I felt when his life points hit zero, and I realized that not only was there nothing left to say but "Goodbye", but that it was all my doing.

I know that I shouldn't have been surprised; I should have expected it. After all, what did I think we were working for, throughout most of our teenage years? Certainly, we didn't go through all of that trouble, face down all those enemies, so that Atem could sit in the Puzzle with his memories for company. That would actually have been crueller than letting him go on as he was, a being without an identity of his own, a trespasser in both my soul and my life. I like to think that I would never have been able to watch him suffer like that, that I would have done whatever it took to make him happy, but the truth is that, if it meant that he would still be here with me as I type this… I might have been selfish enough to hold onto him, no matter what the cost.

It hurts. I feel that it shouldn't, but it does. Every day, when I reach for the space the Puzzle used to occupy on my desk, I try to tell myself that he's finally at peace, that it was not only the best, but the only choice. And the words are comforting, to a certain extent; it does make me feel better to think of him on the other side, basking in the glory of belonging amid his old friends, his contemporaries. But, as I've said, I am selfish, and this consolation palls far too quickly. No words are going to heal the scar in my soul, which oozes fresh drops of separation anxiety with every breath I take. I'm beginning to believe that nothing will. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. The sight of his face, the sound of his voice, the closeness of his presence… those would make everything alright again.

That day, I lost more than my best friend. I lost more than a brother, or a guardian. It isn't that he wasn't all of these things to me, because he was, but none of the words seem to capture the nature of our relationship precisely enough. How can I describe what it felt like to weather a particularly intense crying session, and notice his arms, transparent and weightless but infinitely comforting, around me? How can anyone understand how I looked up to him, as the version of myself that I've always wanted to become? How can I let go of the certainty that, no matter what happens, my king is going to ride to my rescue? How can I ever let go of these ghosts of him, and most importantly, how will I ever be able to grow up if I don't?

People often say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I used to think that was true, when all I knew of life was loneliness and ignorance, and maybe in a way, it is. Certainly, I wouldn't trade an instant of the time we spent together for anything, except the chance to do it all over again. But this pain, however bittersweet its fusion with my memories has made it, is enough to make me understand why people can seal themselves away from the world, why someone would choose oblivion over being forced to witness another sunrise. Hatred is quick to fill the void left by a great love, and most of the time, it's impossible to redirect or dispel.

My friends have tried, of course. They've noticed that something's wrong, and they've done all that they can, become the model of compassionate human beings. I adore them for this, the effort itself as well as the love behind it, but I can't really appreciate any of it. It doesn't resonate deeply enough to dislodge the weight of my memories, or intensely enough to overpower the stubborn tenacity of my love. No matter how hard they try, they'll never exorcise him, and there's a very simple reason for that.

I don't want them to succeed. I don't want to be saved. If holding onto every shred of our time together, every moment of our shared past, means that I'll be destroyed, I'll die euphorically.

Sometimes, when I begin to think like this, and the pills and knives become all too tempting, I feel him watching me, like he's never left, as though his soul is still hanging around my neck. So far, this sensation has stopped me from going too far, from trading the pain for the off-chance that death might allow me to see him again, but even this, the spectre of his disappointment, is beginning to lose its power to restore my will to live. I know, instinctively, that it won't hold me back much longer, but I will keep fighting to the end, if only out of respect for the duelist's honour he left me. No matter how excruciating it gets, I will do my best to live, to draw joy from the fact that I got to meet him at all. I won't give up, but I can't lie to myself either. Knowing him taught me to know myself, and I know that, finally, I have stumbled into a duel I cannot win.

I cannot live without him. That's all there is to it.


	2. Tea

I'm so tired.

It's past nine o'clock by the time I finally allow myself to collapse on my bed; my purse and keys strike the floor beside it, one after the other. The last tenacious rays of summer daylight provide precious little illumination, but since I don't have the strength to turn on the lights, I close my eyes instead, so that the darkness won't bother me as much.

I wonder, as I begin to slip into the shifting patterns behind my eyelids, whether even such minute comfort broke the darkness of the Millennium Puzzle before Yugi inherited it. _If it really was darker than this, I hope that Atem wasn't awake to see it._

I rub my eyes before I reopen them, very slowly. "Atem," I breathe, half-expecting the holy word to trigger something, despite the thousands of years that have passed since its power was last evoked. It doesn't, of course; in the grand scheme of things, it is no longer significant.

We're the only ones it matters to any longer. We're the only ones who even remember it.

I feel the darkness descending as though it were a sheet being draped over me by some malicious spectre. Once again, I contemplate turning on the light, but I am bound in place by the dual shackles of my exhaustion and my grief. The room's darkness mirrors that which I have begun to recognize in my heart; in that respect, it is fitting that it should be allowed to escape banishment.

These past months have been hard on Yugi; he hasn't been anywhere near the same since Atem left. I can't even imagine what he must be going through, what it must feel like not only to have part of your soul extracted, but to have been the one to wield the knife. How did he ever go through with it? How could he have been that strong, strong enough not only to face his other half in battle, but to destroy himself as well?

_Love is the greatest strength_, a voice inside me whispers, and I roll onto my side, curling my arms into my chest.

"I wish he had been weaker, then," I whisper, with no small measure of guilt.

I know that it's selfish to be thinking this way, to wish, even half-heartedly, that Yugi had never become strong or brave, or that Atem had never been liberated. I try to think of it from Atem's point of view, to imagine what it would have been like to remain in this world and watch us die, one by one, until he was left alone again. I know that this, as hard as it is, is the least of the evils. It's the way it has to be.

But it's so difficult.

Since that day, I've done whatever I can to cheer everyone up, to help us focus on the good times, on the memories that, no matter what, we'll always have to remind us of him. I've forced myself to smile so many times that the deceit almost comes naturally now. I've shelved my own pain, covered up my own weaknesses, in order to become the supportive ideal of a best friend, the sort of person I wish I had in my life right now. It isn't much, but it's the best I can do.

It's what I think he would want me to do.

He always hated to see anyone suffer. I'll never forget how he charged out of the palace, with Slifer at his back, in defence of his people. I'll always be grateful for all the times he saved me, all those favours I'll never be able to repay. I'll always remember the way he looked at Yugi in the aftermath of their final duel, the complexity and essential purity of the emotions that passed between them.

I'll always remember what it felt like to be left out of all that.

Yugi acts like he's the only one who's lost someone, like he's the only one grieving over Atem. In all fairness, his loss is much more intense than ours, and he has every right to be devastated by it. But he doesn't seem to realize that the rest of the us are hurting as well, albeit in different ways. I wonder what he'd say if he knew that my heart twists every time I see his face, so similar to and yet so different from Atem's. I wonder if he'd still speak to me if he knew that, deep down, I'm jealous of the bond they shared, even though I'd never have known Atem at all if it hadn't existed.

I wonder how many more times I'll be able to hold him and promise him that everything will turn out alright before I break down myself.

The sunset is complete now, and, grudgingly, I move from my bed to turn on the lights. My eyes move around the room, so familiar and yet so foreign to me in my present state of mind. Each object, each carefully-arranged piece of clothing, seems to shimmer with its own private storehouse of memories, and I close my eyes again, squeezing them tightly as though I'm trying to will away a bad dream.

If only escape were so easy.


	3. Joey

I've never been good with words, especially when it comes to expressing my feelings with them. I usually wind up saying too much, and none of it is really what I wanted to say. It's not like I don't feel anything but the shallow stuff, because I do, but it always seems to get lost somewhere between my head and my mouth. I guess I probably should have put some effort into changing it, before everyone started thinking of me as a motor-mouth airhead, but it never really mattered that much to me.

At least, not until now.

When it was time to say goodbye, and he was standing at the threshold, waiting for us to do it so that he could move on, no one really knew what to say. I don't really even remember what I said to him, but I'm sure that it wasn't what I should have said, what Atem would have read in my mind if he had had that ability, and chosen to exercise it. That was okay, though; nobody can really live up to a moment like that. Even Tea, who never seems to be at a loss for sensitive words, had no idea how to react, and I can't really be expected to do what she couldn't.

Still, though, there are so many things I wish I'd had the chance to tell him, before he was gone. Some of it, I think he knew… all the stuff about my duellist's pride, and how his courage inspired me to fight my hardest as well. But I don't think I ever had the chance to say how much of an impact he's had on my development, not only as a duellist but also as a person. Throughout the time we spent together, he was constantly teaching me that strength isn't measured in the power of a punch, the balance of your bank account, or how many people are afraid of you. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if you breeze through everything in your way or lose miserably; as long as you can hold onto your honour, and stand the sight of your reflection in the bathroom mirror, you can always bounce back. You haven't really lost anything.

I really idolized him. It was hard for me to admit this, even to myself, while he was still around; I had always been taught that independence and self-sufficiency were the most important qualities to develop. The idea of recognizing my own faults completely enough to feel admiration for someone else's strength was completely out of the question, and actually admitting it to them was an even greater crime. It seems stupid, now that enough time has gone by, and if I could say just one more thing to him, I think it would be this: _You gave me an ideal to live up to, and it's made me a better man. Thank you._

Or maybe I'd just apologize.

We all miss Atem, but Yugi and Tea are definitely taking it the hardest. He's a total wreck, and she's not much better, no matter how hard she tries to act like everything's okay. It impressed me, at first, how far she was willing to go to help Yugi, but now, I'm starting to get worried about both of them. I mean, it's been nearly half a year; there should be some sign of progress by now. They should have started to… well, not forget, because I know that's impossible, but maybe let go, at least enough to stand up and move on with their lives. How long are they going to cry over something they can't change, over a ghost they can't ever bring back again? Maybe I'm not really one to talk, though; maybe I got over it too quickly. Maybe I didn't honour our friendship as deeply or completely as I should have; maybe I didn't bury it with the proper ceremony.

Whether or not any of that's true, though, I wish that there was something I could do to help them. Yugi's my best friend, after all… I should be comforting him. I should be brave, and strong, like all the times he and Atem were brave and strong for my sake. I should be the one he cries with, and I should know exactly what to say… not Tea, who has enough of her own problems to deal with. She shouldn't have to work harder, to put herself through so much, just because I'm a coward.

In the end, that's what it comes down to. I've gotten so used to thinking of myself as insensitive and clumsy that I'm afraid to try to help Yugi. I don't really run away from it, exactly… but I don't go out of my way to support him, like Tea's doing. I always wait for him to come to me, and even then, I'm scared I'll say the wrong thing, or he'll misunderstand me, and I'll just wind up making everything ten times worse. I don't ever want to hurt him, at least no more than I already have.

I guess that it's a pretty good explanation… but it's also a pretty poor excuse.

That's why I think that, if I really could talk to him again, I'd apologize to Atem. It's all well and good to talk about ideals, and being a better man, but how could I say any of that sincerely when I'd rather let my friends suffer than step up and at least try to be there for them, when they need me? What does it say about me, that the fear of failure, the most basic enemy that a duellist has to defeat, is enough to hold me back from something so important?

I hope that Atem, wherever he is, can't see me right now. I don't think I'd ever be able to get over his disappointment.

My own is about as much as I can handle.


	4. Seto

Author's Note: This will be the last chapter of this story. Thank you very much to everyone who's taken the time to read it, particularly my kind reviewers. I am very grateful and privileged.

* * *

It's lonely at the top.

At least, that's what everyone who isn't at the top tells themselves, and each other. I suppose that it makes them feel better, that believing in the unhappiness of their superiors makes their own problems easier to bear. And, after all, why not let them have that? They certainly don't have much else.

Like every other cliché, though, this dubious pearl of wisdom has been distilled past the point of relevance. Success, to be sure, can lead to loneliness, but it isn't a certain consequence of it. Most often, it leads to isolation instead, a state which most people mistake for loneliness, but which in fact is different in some important respects.

If you prefer solitude, for instance, isolation can be closer to Heaven than it is to Hell.

Loneliness, as I define it, is the feeling of being unconnected to anything or anyone else, coupled with the wish that the opposite were true. Most people who believe they know something of me would say that the latter condition should render me immune from loneliness, but in truth, only two things have kept me from descending into it, and neither is any personal immunity.

One of them, of course, is Mokuba. The other was my relationship with him, the nameless Pharaoh who used to live in Yugi's body, and to whom I've been connected, apparently, for millennia.

It may be incorrect to talk of our relationship as such. I never considered myself his friend, despite all the assistance I gave him. I imagine that he might have felt differently, but to me, he was only ever my rival, my nemesis… though perhaps not precisely my enemy. He was the only external obstacle to my personal perfection that I wasn't able to defeat, no matter how far I developed, or how strong I became.

And now that he's gone, I'll never have the chance to change that.

I would have given anything to have been the one to fight him in the end, to have played Yugi's part in the ritual that freed not only Atem, but any hope I had of realizing my dream of defeating him. And, of course, I did everything I could to make that happen… but Destiny, or something at least as powerful and meddlesome, saw fit to deny me my due once again. Usually, I've been able to tear whatever I need from life anyway, with or without Destiny's permission, but in this case, I couldn't.

And so, here I am, with only bitter regret to fill the void he left behind.

His friends made some minor overtures to me once we got back from Egypt. Tea suggested that we spend more time together; Joey demanded a rematch to avenge his defeat at Battle City, and Duke suggested that we might even make a day of it, a sort of informal tournament which could include his dice game in addition to Duel Monsters. Thankfully, my responsibilities provided the perfect excuse, and after a few half-hearted protestations, mostly on Tea's behalf, they all left me alone, as I'm sure they would have liked to in the first place.

A few days later, however, Yugi showed up at my office, with his usual leather outfit and red, swollen eyes. Any decent human being might have asked how he was coping, or offered some words of comfort; I greeted him with cold politeness, and listened to his rambling for a minute or two, until he managed to stumble across his point.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?" I replied.

"For…" He took a deep breath, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw him shiver. "I know you wanted to duel Atem. I know you wanted to defeat him, if only for the sake of your duelling record. I'm sorry I had to insist on doing it myself."

"It's done with now. You don't need to apologize." I didn't tell him that, having seen the duel, I had begun to doubt, if only slightly, the certainty of my victory.

"But I really am sorry. And, Kaiba…" He sat up just a bit straighter, and spoke with just a bit more gravity. "If you like, we could still have a duel. It could be an official match--"

"That won't be necessary." An edge crept into my voice.

Whether he recognized the edge, or merely decided to press on in spite of it, I couldn't say. "I wouldn't have Atem to help me, or the God cards…"

"Yugi, stop."

He met my eyes then, and though I forget the exact quality of his gaze, I remember being impressed by it. "You'd probably win. You'd be the champion again."

I turned away from him then; I don't remember the act of doing so, but when I spoke again, it was to the view of Domino City below us. "I refuse."

His voice faltered, and for a moment, it was almost possible to mistake him for the same child I had faced on Duelist Kingdom. "Isn't this what you want?"

There was no point in trying to explain that it wouldn't be the same, defeating him instead of Atem. There was no reason to tell him that, after all, I'm not quite sure what I want, if indeed I want anything. No reason, of course, except the one that lurks behind all of our most embarrassing disclosures and intimate moments; the need to be understood by, to feel connected to, another person.

And I've learned to live without that.

"It's alright." I turned back to him, and rose from my chair; he did the same. "Besides, it's likely that we'll face each other again by chance, in the course of another tournament."

He glanced down, and then back at me. "I doubt it. I think I'm going to give up Duel Monsters… at least for a while." He swallowed, and the duellist's fire in his eyes was perfectly incongruous to his pitiful state. "It reminds me of him… just like everything else."

"I understand," I said, detachedly.

He smiled at me, and shook his head. "No, you don't. But that's okay." He nodded deeply. "Thank you for your time, Kaiba."

"Don't mention it."

He turned his back on me; I sat down and swivelled my chair to face my keyboard. I heard my office door open, and when I looked up a few seconds later, he was standing there, staring at me.

"Is there something else?" I asked, with barely a pause in my typing.

He hesitated, then said, very deliberately, "You know, I would rather that you had been the one… to fight him, to send him away. I would rather that it had been anyone else… even though, at the same time, I'm glad it was me."

I stopped typing. "I don't understand."

He smiled again. "I don't expect you to." And, with that, he was gone. I haven't seen him since.

Often, I find myself returning to this memory, as though I've missed something important in our brief dialogue. I wonder whether I was wrong to reject his offer, whether defeating him might have gone at least some distance toward mending my wounded pride, whether it might be possible to avenge myself on Atem by defeating his protégé. Many times, I've been on the brink of picking up the phone and calling him, but something always holds me back. I can't even say for sure what it is, but I suspect that I know the answer nonetheless.

It seems that to be immune to loneliness is to be dependent on solitude.


End file.
